Bluesky’s popularity has soared since the presidential election earlier this month, suddenly becoming Elon Musk’s X and Yuan thread. But CEO Jay Graber had some words of caution for potential acquirers: Bluesky is “billionaire proof.”
Graeber told CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Thursday that Bluesky’s open design, which gives users the option to leave the service with all their followers, could hinder potential acquisition efforts.
“The proof of the billionaire is the way everything is designed, so if someone buys it or Bluesky goes out of business, everything is open source,” Graeber said. “What happens to Twitter won’t happen to us in the same way because you always have the option to move immediately and not have to start over.”
Graber was referring to the way millions of users left Twitter (now X) after Musk acquired the company in 2022. Still pales in comparison.
X and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October that Threads has about 275 million monthly users. Although Musk explain In May, X had 600 million monthly users, and market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimated the number of monthly users at 318 million as of October.
Bluesky was created as an internal Twitter project in 2019 during Jack Dorsey’s second term as CEO, and became an independent public benefit corporation in 2022.
“In 2019, Jack had a better vision for social media, which is why he chose me to build this project. We are very grateful to him for establishing it and we will continue to achieve this goal.” Graber founded Happening, which is a social network focused on events. “We’re building an open source social network that anyone can take hold of and build on, and it’s very different from anything that’s been done in social media before. No one has been so open, so transparent and given this much control It’s all in the hands of the user.
Graeber noted that part of Bluesky’s business plan involves offering a subscription service that gives users access to special features. She also said Bluesky will add more services for third-party coders as part of the startup’s “developer ecosystem.”
Graeber said Bluesky has ruled out letting advertisers send algorithmically recommended ads to users.
“There’s a lot on the roadmap, and I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetization,” Graeber said. “We’re not going to build an algorithm that just pushes you ads and locks in users. That’s not our model.”
Bluesky has experienced significant growth before. In September, the company added 2 million users after X was suspended in Brazil for violating content moderation policies and related legal issues.
October, blue sky declare The company raised $15 million in a funding round led by Blockchain Capital. The company has raised a total of $36 million in funding, according to Pitchbook.
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